Director of Engineering

About Allia Technology

Allia Health Group builds technology across multiple healthcare brands — Brello / HelloWellness, Southend Pharmacy, and Allia Care. Our Technology organisation runs on a deliberate operating model: an upstream Strategy & Execution engine that turns brand strategy into a ranked, capacity-feasible roadmap reflecting only committed value, and a downstream AI-Native Technology Operating System (AIN-TOS) that delivers it through a 4-quarter roadmap, two-week Linear cycles, capacity-mapped pods, and a shared operating system of standards (design, engineering, QA, agent OS, security, observability).

We are scaling the leadership of this organisation. As the CTO concentrates on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, we are creating a Director of Engineering to own the build-and-run heart of the function: Software, Cloud & Security, and Internal IT.

The Role

The Director of Engineering is the single accountable owner for how Allia builds, ships, secures and runs its platforms and internal systems. You will lead three functions — Software, Cloud & Security, and Internal IT — covering roughly 19+ engineers and specialists across frontend, backend, fullstack, QA automation, cloud/DevOps, security (SecOps and GRC), and internal IT operations.

You own delivery and reliability end to end, operating the engineering functions against AIN-TOS so the CTO is free to focus on the frontier. You translate the committed roadmap into shipped, high-quality, secure software on a predictable rhythm — protecting capacity honesty, enforcing the shared OS, and keeping pods autonomous but coherent.

This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who has run multi-team engineering organisations, cares about operating discipline as much as technical excellence, and can hold reliability, security and delivery accountable simultaneously.

What You Will Own

Engineering delivery. Accountable for shipping the committed roadmap across Brello, Patient Platform, Realtime Data Hub, Zito Care and supporting platforms. Run fixed two-week Linear cycles as the single delivery rhythm; map team capacity against cycle priorities; close cycles with demos and retros that feed the learning loop.

Platform reliability and cloud. Own cloud architecture, infrastructure and DevOps (AWS / GCP). Accountable for uptime, performance, incident response and the operational health of everything in production.

Security posture. Own security strategy and execution across SecOps and GRC, including the path to and maintenance of SOC2. Ensure security validation is built into delivery controls before release, not bolted on after.

Internal IT. Own internal systems, identity and access management, user management, web operations and procurement — the systems the whole company depends on.

The shared OS. Maintain and evolve engineering standards, QA standards, deployment frameworks and observability as shared infrastructure that pods consume rather than rebuild. Local autonomy, global coherence.

Talent and structure. Lead, coach and grow three function heads and their teams. Close open positions (Software, Cloud & Security and Internal IT currently carry open seats), uplevel capability, and build a bench.

Translate, commit, report. In our decision-rights model, technology leadership translates strategy into demand, runs assessment and capacity mapping, and reports committed versus realised value. You carry that responsibility for the engineering functions and represent them in the executive operating cadence.

How You Will Work

You will operate inside an established, opinionated operating model. Success means running it well, not replacing it:

• Capacity is honest. Capacity is real, not aspirational. You and your leads protect it. The roadmap reflects only what can actually be delivered.
• Pods own delivery. Pods are autonomous, integrated, and free of a central queue. You set standards and remove blockers; you do not become the bottleneck.
• Commitment is two-sided. Engineering commits to deliver; quality and security controls are non-negotiable gates before release.
• Override is visible. Recommendations and overrides are separate and both logged. Decisions are transparent.
• Learning compounds. Every release feeds the shared OS. Incidents, retros and adoption data become standards, prompts and infrastructure.

You will run the bi-weekly cycle cadence (planning, cycle-close demos, retros) and the weekly rhythm (intake triage, cycle health, blockers cleared), and contribute to the monthly portfolio review and quarterly roadmap rebuild.

What We Are Looking For Must Have

• 8+ years in software engineering with 4+ years leading engineering organisations, including managing managers / function leads.
• Proven track record shipping production software on a predictable delivery cadence across multiple teams.
• Strong command of modern cloud infrastructure (AWS and/or GCP), DevOps practices, and production reliability at scale.
• Real ownership of security in an engineering context — comfortable being accountable for security posture and compliance (SOC2 or equivalent).
• Experience operating within a structured delivery system (cycles/sprints, capacity planning, defined standards) and the discipline to protect it.
• A builder of people: hiring, coaching, levelling and retaining strong engineers.
• Clear, executive-level communicator who can translate between strategy and delivery and report committed vs. realised value credibly.

Strongly Preferred

• Experience across the full stack of functions you'll own — software delivery, cloud/infra, security, and internal IT — or a demonstrated ability to lead functions outside your original specialism.
• Background in regulated or healthcare environments, or other settings where security, compliance and reliability are first-class.
• Familiarity with AI-native engineering practices and agent-based tooling (we run an "agent OS" as part of our shared OS).
• Experience with Linear (or comparable) as a system of record for delivery.

How You Lead

• You treat operating discipline as a feature, not overhead.
• You make capacity and commitments honest, even when the answer is uncomfortable.
• You give teams autonomy and hold them to shared standards.
• You are calm and decisive in incidents, and you make every incident a source of compounding improvement.

Why This Role Matters

This is one of the most consequential leadership hires in Allia Technology. You will take direct ownership of the engineering, platform, security and IT backbone of a multi-brand healthcare technology group — and in doing so, you free our most senior technologist to drive the AI and Robotics work that will define our advantage. You inherit a working operating model, a committed roadmap, and strong function leads. Your job is to make the build-and-run engine excellent, reliable and secure, and to lead it with the autonomy of a true owner.